No, those who could avoided the place largely because of its washed-clean, gleaming stairs.
Those stairs were wide and sharp-edged, capacious and sturdy, but they were rarely seen. They were, instead, crowded with huddled bundles of rags with fever-bright eyes ranked upon them shoulder to shoulder, with only a narrow ribbon of scrubbed brightness leading to the rotting-cream doors.
These were Thin Meg’s brood, and none dared touch them or move them along until there was a soft thud, and a stick-light body was rolled down into the road to be collected. None pointed at, jeered at, or spoke to them. They sat in their rags and watched Whitchapel Road go by, and only in the dead of night could a sound be heard from them.
A thin sound, a low sound. A soft, hissing, draining mumble.
Emma walked briskly, her eyes stinging even under the veil’s protection. The din of traffic was incredible, and were it not for Mikal she might have been accosted, or worse. He drifted at her shoulder, between her and the gutter, and even the alley-side cutpurses retreated. Shouts and curses from coachmen and carters, the crack of a whip, children screaming as they ran past engaged upon some game or another–or intent on relieving pockets of their contents, for theirs were nimble and desperate fingers.
The drabs had mostly retired to sleep off their work and the gin they deadened its rigors with, but the public houses were open and brawling, flashboys crowding the doors and displaying their Alterations: shiny metal, oiled leather, bits of glass, sellsongs from the wheelbarrows jammed wherever they could elbow a niche and pay the “protection” fee levelled from whoever controlled that slice of paving or wooden-slat walk this week, footsteps, hoofbeats, conversation and cries. Crackles of ætheric disturbance, spat charms, lightfinger wards and oil-charms popping blue or yellow sparks as they reacted to the eddies and swirls of the crowd.
The noise drew away when she stepped over the invisible border between the rest of the world and Thin Meg’s domicile.
She had to hold her skirts close to pass through the hunched rag bundles as they leaned away from her. A spill of cold slid down her skin as she stepped up, and up again, Mikal behind her.
The Endor in her woke, and the starvelings’ bony hands appeared, fingers of bleached anemone blindly seeking for the disturbance in their cold, silent suffering.
A Prime could not pass unnoticed; there was simply too much ætheric force in them to do so. And any of the Black who braved these stairs would feel a certain… trepidation. Still, she lifted her chin and twitched her skirts away from the seeking fingers.
The crop of starvelings was dense at the top of the stairs, where those not yet whittled to apathy hunched, swaying slightly as a wheatfield rippled by a cool wind. The Chapelease doors–massive, oaken things not yet Scab-rotted perhaps because of the rancid renderings poured over them every Twelfthnight–hung ajar, quivering.
They never closed.
Mikal was suddenly before her, and he pushed the left-hand door wide, its hinges giving that same faint hissing noise. Emma quelled a shudder, took a very tight grasp on her temper, and continued on.
The sudden dimness was a balm, lit only by shuddering candleflames atop thick tallow columns, their smoke greasing the painted roof. If one looked up, cripplewing angels and spinning saints could be seen leering through the scrim of rippling soot.
Emma did not. Instead, she passed her gaze smoothly over the ranks of broken pews marching up the narrow interior, the alcoves on either side full of deeper shadows. Nothing amiss, though thick whitish gauze-mist peeped above the slumping wooden backs, moving cold-sluggish.
“And what is this,” a deep voice rasped and slipped between chipped and blackened columns, “come to my doorstep now? A little tiny witchling, already slight as a sparrow.” A thick, burping chuckle. “More meat on her companion, and a pretty leg he shows too.”
Emma’s pace did not falter. She continued down the central aisle, and the air grew heavier. Satin and rotting silk shifted, fabric rubbing against itself, and the massive bulk slithering in the well-hole where an altar had once stood resolved into a shape. Just what kind of shape it was difficult to say, for there were huge folds and bulges, bright blinking eyes and ivory teeth, yards and yards of cloth piled, buttoned, and stretched about peeping sickly white flesh.
“Marimat the Fallen.” Emma put her gloved palms together, halting, and bowed slightly. “I greet you.”
“Oh, she greets me.” Several long, chubby, oddly flexible fingers crawled over the blasted altar-wreckage, and there was a heaving. The many eyes blinked, flashing in their preferred dimness, and the sliding and scraping in the pews were those who had offered her more than just their physical weight in exchange for the starving peace she granted. “Did you come here to trade, wee witchling?” A thick, groaning laugh, cold as leftover black pudding.
Emma cocked her head. Mikal was tense and silent. The pews behind her would be full of gauzy movement by now, phosphorescent suggestions of cheek and hand and shoulder, supple smoky coils. “Careful,” she said, mildly enough. “Your starvelings appear restless.”
“Do they?” A long groaning noise, and the gauzy whispers retreated. More bits of her bulk bubbled up, winking with jewels, both paste and real. A hen’s-egg sapphire in tarnished silver–probably real–chimed as it boiled over the edge of the stone cup and rolled away.
Emma ignored it, and therefore Mikal did as well.
“I think,” the thing in the well continued, hauling and shifting even more bits of herself, “you are the restless one. Or is the word ‘troubled’? An ill wind brings you here.”
“That should delight you.” The next few moments were very delicate, so Emma gave herself a pause. “Ill wind and misfortune usually does.”
A great rolling, rippling shrug. “They seek me out, little witchling. I do not stir one foot to seek them.”
And you fatten on their despair, a little at a time. “Yet all Whitchapel feels your fingers, Thin Meg.” Very quietly. “Every dark corner, and every crevice between cobbles.”
Stillness filled Chapelease. The walls groaned a little as the creature’s attention constricted.
The eyes narrowed, their gleams intensifying. Finally, the creature shifted again, heaving still more of her bulk up toward the lip of the depression where the shattered altar had once stood tall and proud. More fingers splatted dully in dust and splinters, grinding against stone.
They were plump, and they looked soft, but those tiny appendages could find the smallest crack and slide in. Stone crumbled before their persistent fingering. It was ever thus with those of her ilk–they had all the time in the world to poke and prod, to cajole and wear away.
“State your business,” Thin Meg finally said, and now Emma could see her actual mouth, the V-shaped orifice peeling open to show serried rows of sharp white teeth. “With no riddles, witchling.”
How very interesting. “Something new has been added to Whitchapel.”
More stillness. Mikal’s arm lifted, and he gently, slowly, pushed Emma back a step. His other hand lingered at a knife hilt, and Emma’s pulse sought to speed itself, was repressed.
“Oh, aye, and not with my leave.” Thin Meg laughed, and this time the heavy, ugly sound was truly amused. Still cold, though, a razor’s edge cutting the gloom, sparking against creeping fingers made of fine-woven smoke as they inched closer, pressing against Emma’s skirts. “What do you know of it? One of your kind, little hands prodding and poking where they shouldn’t. Take care lest the lid snap on those fingers!”